


It Was an Accident

by Vaderisbae



Category: Witches of Woodside (D&D Stream)
Genre: I Wish I Regretted It, I Wrote This To Hurt People, I am so sorry, Just So Much Pain, Pain, Please Nobody Murder Me, You're gonna hate me for this, but I don't
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-05
Updated: 2020-09-05
Packaged: 2021-03-06 19:28:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,757
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26294158
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Vaderisbae/pseuds/Vaderisbae
Summary: Mari is working her shift at Brimstone Records when she has an unexpected visitor.TW: Very brief mentions of transphobic comments because Davian is an ASSHOLE. If that is triggering for you, you can skip the part where Alex begins explaining things and I'll give a brief sum up at the end of the chapter.
Kudos: 3





	It Was an Accident

**Author's Note:**

> Okay, sooooo...there is no excuse for this. I know exactly why I wrote it and I would do it again in a heartbeat. I wish I could say I'm sorry?

The bell chimed as the door to the record shop swung open. Mari set down the thick textbook she’d been slogging through for her Ancient Greek History course and looked up, putting on her customer service mask of a polite smile and pleasant facade. The smile blossomed into a delighted grin when she saw the person walking inside.

“Alex! Wha-ho-whyyyy are you here? I mean, I’m so happy to see you, but how did you get here?” Mari jumped up from behind the counter and pulled her younger brother into a tight hug. 

He was almost an inch taller than the last time she’d seen him and he’d definitely gotten a professional haircut to fix the hack-job she’d done in her apartment. He looked really good, more like himself than she’d ever seen before. It had only been a few weeks since he’d come to visit her with Sebastian, but he seemed far more settled than the nervous kid who’d sat on her couch and come out to his black sheep of a sister. Actually, now that she was really looking about him, she could tell that _something_ was different, something that couldn’t be attributed to a haircut and some new clothes.

“Hey. Al Pal? Are you okay?” Mari asked, pulling out of the hug and holding Alex at arms length by the shoulders. He ran his hand through his hair and glanced up at her before looking away, unwilling to hold her gaze. That worried Mari more than anything. She might have been forced to stay away from her brother for three years, but that didn’t mean she couldn’t still pick up on his tells. Something was wrong, he had something to tell her and he knew it was going to be upsetting. Steel bands formed around her lungs and squeezed, threatening to stop her breathing altogether. Alex cringed as her hands clenched tighter on his shoulders, that expression of pain breaking through the haze gathering in Mari’s vision. _Not now, dumbass. Panic later when you’re alone_. She closed her eyes briefly and counted to ten, breathing with the count.

“Alex.” Her voice sharpened to the no-nonsense Momri tone she used when her friends were being especially stupid. “What’s wrong?”

Alex bit his lip and shrugged her hands off his shoulders, which stung a bit but there was time for hurt later, before finally meeting her eyes.

“Um, I kinda got a job? I guess? Things are...complicated right now.” He released an awkward chuckle that petered out at Mari’s furrowed eyebrows and concerned expression. “Can we talk about this later?”

“Yes, that’s probably a good idea.” A voice cut in from behind the pair, startling a jump and a yip of surprise from Mari. “My new employee and I have some things to discuss before you can show him the ropes.”

Mari whipped around, instinctively holding Alex behind her and pulling out her phone. The Spectator leaned against the counter in his usual red silk shirt and black suit jacket, arms crossed and a single eyebrow raised at Mari’s reaction. His black eyes revealed nothing but amusement at the situation.

“You know I _hate_ when you do that!” Mari exclaimed, slipping her phone back into her pocket and relaxing just a touch. “Wait, did you say ‘new employee’?” She turned to glance back at Alex, who was looking at The Spectator apprehensively, but not at all surprised. “What. The. Fuck?”

The Spectator just laughed and beckoned for Alex to follow him into the back room that magically doubled as a recording studio and an office. Mari stood there, too shocked to do anything other than stare at the now closing back room door. She must have rolled a nat 1 on her panic attack check because everything she’d been able to suppress just moments before crashed over her like an ugly tidal wave. She clung to just enough calm to lock the front shop door and flip the sign to ‘Closed’ before crumpling into a ball behind the checkout counter. Thoughts raced through her mind, too quick and too tangled to make sense of. What did The Spectator mean by “employee”? Did Alex make a deal? How the **fuck** did The Spectator even contact her brother? She knew, theoretically, that The Spectator was quite capable of finding out everything about her life, but he’d never done anything more than give unsubtle “suggestions” before. _Fuck fuck fuck fuck FUCK._ Her mind spiraled for what felt like hours before she was able to reel it back in and tamp her emotions down into the neat, labeled boxes she tried to keep them contained in.

Breathing in deliberate, measured breaths, Mari sat up ( _when did I get on the floor?_ ) and uncurled from her ball. Her back ached and pain shot through her head, the beginning of the mother of all tension headaches. She pulled herself onto her feet with the help of the counter just as the back room door opened and The Spectator walked out, arm slung amiably around her brother’s shoulders. The calm she’d fought for fled as anger rolled through her, burning through her good sense and self control. This _Fiend_ was acting like he _owned_ her brother! There was no FUCKING way that was going to fly.

“I don’t know what’s going on, but you need to get your hands off my brother, right. The fuck. Now.” Ethereal zeros and ones swarmed out from her fingers, despite being nowhere near her phone, as she stalked towards the two. 

Alex shrank down into himself, recognizing the rage on Mari’s face and knowing it was at least partly directed towards him. The Spectator was unfazed by her show of arcane magic. He knew she was nowhere near powerful enough to pose any kind of actual threat, he was a being beyond anything one mortal could harm.

“Well, I think you two have some catching up to do.” His lips curled into a satisfied smirk and he snapped, disappearing into thin air in a puff of black smoke.

“Mars Bar--” Alex began, voice pleading and small.

“No, no, not here. I’m taking you to my apartment and we’re going to talk.” Mari grabbed his wrist and dragged him out of the shop to her junker of a car, him not resisting and not trying to explain any further.

The ride to her building was silent, the kind of silence that was oppressive and swollen and so full to bursting with words that shouldn’t be said that a single sound would be the chink in the dam causing it to all come flooding out. So neither of them made a sound. The tension followed them to Mari’s door where she fumbled with her keys, ignoring the shaking of her hands and the numbness crawling up from her toes. She mumbled out a string of curses until she finally fit the right key in the lock and opened the door. She walked inside, not even checking if Alex had followed. Alex’s entry went unheard as she beelined to the topmost right cabinet, highest shelf, all the way in the back. Fingers brushed against dusty glass and she stretched onto her tiptoes, just barely able to grasp the bottle and pull it down. Not bothering to find a glass, she spun the lid off the vodka bottle and took a chug. The alcohol burned a line of fire down her throat and she coughed, eyes watering at the acrid pain. Bottle in hand, she made her way back to the couch and plopped down facing Alex next to her. Her brother eyed the vodka, but didn’t comment. Her stomach roiled with the liquor and anxiety. She had forgotten to eat lunch today and was regretting it. She couldn’t tell if the sudden light-headedness was from panic, low blood sugar, or alcohol. With effort, she focused on Alex, waiting for him to begin.

“Uh, first off, I didn’t realize exactly what I was doing when it happened. It was an accident.” Alex started saying and Mari’s head fell into her hands. That was a statement she knew all too well. Hell, it was practically her life motto at this point. “So, I-I, uh, shit I suck at this.” Mari reached out a hand from where it was covering her face and gently squeezed his arm, her dark, curly mane of hair falling forward to hide the rest of her face. “Okay, so I came out to Sebastian, right? And he was so cool and amazing about it, just like you were, and I thought that maybe I was just being a coward and nothing bad would happen. So. Um, so I kinda told mom and dad, uh, Davian, and it...didn’t exactly go like I thought it would.”

At this, Mari dropped her hand from her face and snapped her head up to see tears gathering in Alex’ eyes. She pulled him into her lap, wrapping arms around him and stroking his hair as he began to sob. He was really too big to fit in her lap at all well, but that wasn’t important at the moment. She held him, murmuring meaningless soft words into his hair, offering comfort while trying to stuff down her own shattering heart. Heartbreak wasn’t a new emotion for her, but it hurt just as bad every. damn. time.

After a while, Alex’s tears subsided and he sat back up, scooting out of Mari’s embrace and wiping his face with a flannel sleeve. His eyes were red and puffy, crusted salt trails on his cheeks down to his chin. Mari resisted the urge to grab him and hold him again. If he needed space to finish the rest of his story, she could do that for him.

“Sorry,” his voice cracking and he cleared his throat. Mari jumped up and ran to the kitchen, returning with a glass of water. He took it gratefully and swallowed a few greedy gulps. “Anyway, so, Davian told me I only felt like this because I’m mentally ill or something and I just needed to be ‘fixed’ and mom tried to talk him down, but it wasn’t working. You know how he gets. He was yelling and screaming and I couldn’t take it, so I ran out of the house. I just ran. I, uh, I ended up getting lost and just wandered around until I found an old record shop that was still open. I remembered you worked at a place like it, so I just went in. I thought maybe I could maybe hide in an aisle or something and listen to music until it closed. It worked pretty well for the first, like, half hour, but then the owner found me.”

“The Spectator.” The words slipped out of Mari’s mouth without her even realizing it. The numbness had spread to her arms, she couldn’t feel her hands or her feet at this point. In the back of her head, she knew this was a bad sign, but Alex was the priority right now. Her own shit was not going to interfere.

“Yeah, that’s what he said his name was. And he was really nice too and he helped me up from where I was sitting on the ground and gave me a soda, don’t worry, I made sure it was sealed before drinking it; I’m not an idiot. Well, at least not in that way. So he just talked to me for a really long time and I ended up telling him what had happened and how fucked up everything was and how screwed I was and how I had no _fucking_ CLUE what I was going to do now.” He took a moment to just breathe, shaking away the tears leaking from the corners of his eyes. “But he told me it didn’t have to be that way. He said I could fix it. He said that all I had to do was make him a promise, like a blank check, like an IOU, you know? He made it sound so simple and easy and all I had to do to fix _**everything**_ was just shake his hand...So I did.” 

His gaze had dropped to Mari’s hand on his arm, but at that last sentence he raised his red-rimmed, bright blue eyes to her face. Mari tried her best to hide her look of gut-wrenching fear, but knew she was only partially successful. Dread coiled sinuously in her gut, melding with the anxiety clutching her chest. It was too much, this was all too much. Alex was the only person in her _entire_ world that had never done ANYTHING to deserve this much hurt. She had done everything she could to love him and protect him and shield him from Davian’s poison. But she’d failed. Fuck. She’d failed at the ONE thing that really mattered. And now the most important person in her life had fallen into the same shitstorm she was stuck in. Fuck.

He finished up his story, explaining how The Spectator had somehow fucked with time or reality or whatever it was that he did and changed Davian’s reaction. Davian was now fully supportive of Alex’s transition and offered to fund any procedures or purchases Alex needed to feel completely comfortable with himself. All The Spectator had requested so far was that Alex move to LA and help out at Brimstone Records. So he’d managed to convince Davian to fly him out here and enroll him in a school nearby. He ran out of words sometime after that. Mari sat with him and held him until he drifted off to sleep, exhausted from purging all that emotion and pain.

When she was sure he was completely out, she scooched carefully out from under his lanky frame and snuck into her room, closing the door as softly as she could, the latch engaging with a _snick_. She rested her head against the door, thumping it on the wood once, just hard enough to be felt through the ringing in her ears, before sliding down to her knees. A minute passed...two...three minutes with Mari slumped against the thin wood, unmoving except for the slight rise and fall of her chest. She was beyond panic attacks now. An eerie stillness enveloped her, mind unnaturally clear, thoughts sharp-edged crystalline shards.

“Spectator.” It came out as a whisper first. “Spectator.” She paused, waiting for his response. Nothing answered. “Spectator! I know you can _**FUCKING**_ hear me!”

“Tsk tsk, such language,” The Spectator’s saccharine voice spilled out into the air right next to her ear. She was so far past feeling that she didn’t even jump. “You called? I imagine you had quite the talk with your sweet brother just now. He really is one of a kind, you know. Much like you.”

“Fuck you. You knew...you _knew_ he was vulnerable and _good_ and innocent and just a kid and, and he doesn’t deserve this.” Mari’s heart broke again as she spoke.

“Hmm, deserve is such a _subjective_ idea, don’t you think? Who gets to decide what a person deserves? Did I _deserve_ to have everything ripped from me, my body, my life, everything?” The Spectator sneered down at where Mari remained leaning against the door, her head tilted up just enough to match his black gaze. “So, maybe, he didn’t _deserve_ a deal with the devil, but neither did he deserve to be born in the wrong body or to have an asshole father or to have such a failure of a sister.”

Bile rose up her throat as The Spectator repeated the same thing she had thought to herself just an hour earlier. _Even he can see it. I’m nothing. I can’t do anything right. All I do is fuck shit up for everyone else._ Those thoughts were shredded into nothing against the diamond corners of her resolve. What she could or couldn’t have done to prevent this didn’t matter now. What mattered was what she decided to do about it.

“Take me.”

The Spectator’s eyebrows rose, but he didn’t respond.

“Take my soul, or whatever it is that you want from me. Just, just let him keep what you fixed for him and take me instead. Let me take his place, let me fulfill the deal. Please. _Please._ ”

“You would do this for your brother? Without knowing what you’re risking, what you might be losing?”

“Always.”

“Then...you have a deal. All you have to do is shake my hand.”

**Author's Note:**

> Alex Explanation: Basically he told Davian about being trans and his dad did NOT react well, so Alex ran out and ended up finding a record store to hole up in. The store just so happened to be owned by The Spectator who promised to fix things with Davian if Alex made a deal, which he did.
> 
> Please don't murder me. I love you guys? Even if I'm a horrible person who enjoys tormenting my fellow WoW people :]


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